The wearable medical device market has expanded greatly over the past decade, with consumer devices, such as the Fitbit® and Jawbone® wireless activity trackers, becoming a popular way for people to quantify and take charge of their personal fitness while rapid developments are simultaneously occurring in similar devices having a wide range of clinical uses. These devices are constantly becoming smaller, offering better battery life through both new battery chemistries and more efficient electronics, while providing more data and using better and more efficient algorithms to render that data useful.
Existing devices, however, are not yet suitable for providing all of the various types of data that may be necessary to appropriately monitor the health of a user. Where multiple types of data must be observed, different devices must often be used. In a clinical setting, this means keeping many different types of wearable medical sensors in inventory and keeping that inventory, if reusable, maintained. With batteries requiring proper care to reach their advertised lifespans, having more of such devices is likely to impact the care that each device receives.
While a number of biometric measurement techniques exist for the detection of biometric signals, one reason that prior art devices have failed to incorporate these capabilities into a single device is that interference, primarily between active (transceivers) and passive (receive only) sensors used to gather the different data types, makes accurately gathering such data quite difficult. To gather a variety of data types, these two types of sensors must be co-located on the human body, which often results in the active type sensor interfering with the passive sensor and corrupting that sensor's data. In addition, in the case of a single biometric patch configured to gather a variety of data types, many sensor types, including active and passive sensors, must be co-located in a relatively compact area, further increasing the likelihood of signal interference.
Existing devices may also require a wire between sensors worn on the user to obtain certain types of data. Such devices are susceptible to the intrusion of moisture, which can result in premature failure, potentially leaving a user without the benefit of health monitoring for some time. Existing devices are also unable to alert others as to a medical emergency, instead serving only as passive data recorders. Finally, existing devices tend to be fragile and unable to withstand significant shocks or flexing.
What is needed, therefore, are techniques for making such devices more flexible, durable and capable.